His Beautiful Death
by Shimmertail
Summary: On the night before the Quell, Gloss considers the most important Games of his life, the one he really loves, and whether his life was really worth living. For the LawlClan Writing Challenge.


_Written for the LawlClan Monthly Writing Challenge. The prompt was a quote by John Green: "What is the point of being alive if you__don't at least try to do something remarkable?"_

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"Are you two twins?" It was a question he often heard when he and his sister made appearances together in the Capitol, usually falling from the lips of some drunken twot who had spent most of the night trailing her fingers down his chest and giggling inanely at every other word he said. _Sorry, love, but there's only one person who wouldn't have to pay for my services. If you want me, talk to Snow._

Yes, he sold himself out to the lovely ladies and gentleman of the esteemed Capitol. He was popular, not as much of a hot commodity as Odair or his sister, but he had his regulars. It was all he could do to protect the one he really loved.

Cashmere would usually answer for him, luscious red lips thinning in a smile. "No, Gloss is my baby brother by a few months." Then she would stand on her tiptoes and peck him on the cheek, as if to show how much she loved her dear _baby brother,_ and Gloss would extract the Capitol slut's fingers from the hem of his shirt.

Cashmere was older by nine months, sixteen days, and three hours. She never let him forget it.

They could have been twins, he supposed. They looked alike, white-blond hair, pale skin, and large blue eyes that give off an illusion of purity. Their lips curved in the same way when they smiled, and both of them had the same naturally proud expression, although that came more with being a citizen of their District than anything else. Yes, they were almost the same in every way, the stunning diamond siblings from 1.

But, and he had never understood it, probably never would, there was something that made eyes fly to his sister that left him as just her pale shadow in the background. Maybe it was because she was older, or female, or infinitely more beautiful than anyone Gloss had ever seen, but there was something about his sister that almost forced other people to notice her, to desire her approval over anything.

For sixteen years, ninety-four days and eight hours, Gloss had been trapped under her spell as well. He had been content to live as her adoring shadow, the blurred face in the background of her life, the one who did everything he could to help her. He had never thought it odd, this desire to exist only as her helper, her loyal servant. It was all he had ever known, and occasionally he would wonder how long it would have gone on had something not changed.

He still remembered how stunning she had looked in her Reaping day dress, silk the color of lapis clinging to her curves, a tiny diamond token hanging from the chain around her neck. Her hair had been down, a stream of platinum trickling down her back. He remembered the flicker of triumph in her eyes when her name had been called. He could still hear the murmurs of disappointment from the other girls, before they had been cut short by two identical icy glares. They were furious that they had not been chosen, yes, but no girl dared to step forward and lay claim to the honor that was rightfully Cashmere's.

Why? Because his sister was the very best, and crossing her wasn't just dangerous; it was deadly. If the girl who volunteered for her made it out of the games, she wouldn't have lasted more than a week when she made it home.

Saying goodbye to her in the Justice Building was the hardest thing he had ever done. Surviving his own arena had been easier than losing her, detaching from the one he had never been seperated from. Gloss swore he would never forget, not even on his dying day, the moment when she had smiled at him and kissed his cheek. "I'll be home soon, baby brother," she had whispered in his ear, arms snaking around his neck. "This will be my victory."

Gloss watched everything. Interviews, recaps, talk show hosts discussing each of the more promising tributes. His sister was a favorite, but so was every other Career. He knew the other tribute from 1, a boy his age named Indigo, and he knew that he had never hated anyone more. There was someone else with his sister, someone else who couldn't protect her like he could.

If anything happened to his sister and Indigo made it home alive, he wouldn't last a day. Gloss would make sure of that.

On the night of her interview, he was a slave to both the television and her. She was wearing something that glinted like a diamond when she moves. _A diamond_, he thought, memorizing the curves of her body under the tight dress, _or a knife_. She liked her knives, Cashmere, more than she'd ever liked her diamonds.

She played her part to a tee, sexy and mysteriously alluring. He could see the audience was drawn in, captivated by her just like he was. When she laughed at one of Flickerman's bad jokes, it was almost tangible and cut Gloss up inside like broken glass. He had no doubt that his sister would come home, but he needed her by his side now, jeering at the 11 tributes' accents and scoffing at how timid the 12 girl is. He wanted Cashmere, and he wanted her so badly he could almost feel the kiss on his cheek again.

It was no time at all before the Games had begun, and Gloss could not leave the television, not while his sister needs him to watch. His mother begged for him to come eat, come sleep, but he couldn't let his sister down, could he?

When his mother started crying and left the house, he barely even noticed.

Cashmere made it out of the Cornucopia with two knives, a bag of supplies, and the blood of three tributes staining her hands. She met back up with what stood as the Career pack this year, Indigo and the tributes from 2. Both of the District 4 tributes had died in the Cornucopia, but they hadn't been much anyways. They wouldn't have helped his sister, no more than Indigo would with his twig of a spear and stupid, cocky smile. _Never get cocky, baby brother,_ she would always tell him during training. _It makes you stupid, and that's a weakness._

Cashmere returned his arrogant grin with a polite smirk of her own, and when Indigo was stabbed to death while keeping watch, no one questioned her. Gloss couldn't have been happier.

The Career pack lasted until the final four, when the District 2 tributes turned on each other like rabid dogs hungry for a kill. Gloss was almost shaking the television in frustration when the camera panned away just as his sister made her quick escape.

An avalanche crashed down the snowy mountains that covered the arena, driving out the hidden tribute from 3 and killing the surviving kid from 2. Gloss would remember actually crying out as the 3 girl took his sister's eye out and cheering as she retaliated in kind, stabbing her in the heart instead. The blood spatter was all over her face, and Gloss had never seen Cashemere more beautiful.

"Citizens of Panem, I give you the victor of this year's Hunger Games!"

When his sister stepped off the train and he swept her into his arms, the eyes that stared back at him were cold and foreign. The prosthetic eye was well-made, and it had nothing to do with the alien discomfort there.

The stylists and surgeons had done their jobs well, returning her looks to the pristine perfection from before her Games. That close to her, he could almost taste the entrancing aura that radiated from her. She broke his heart, on that day and all the days that followed, with her cool tone and distant eyes. He would have given her everything, but it wasn't wanted. _He_ wasn't wanted.

From there, Gloss could barely keep the events straight in his mind. Another year, another Reaping, his voice volunteering. The train ride to the Capital, the interviews, the training; it all blurred together into one feeling of emptiness, of awareness that the spot next to him was empty. It was as bad as if they'd taken his right hand or foot.

Cashmere had come to see him off at the Justice Building, which he thought appropriate. He had given her a life of servitude—not that it was a true life, not this mockery of really living where all he did was to please her, to make her love him—and she had come to sentence him to death after he had outlived his usefulness.

Then, the Games, with all their trumpeting fanfare and gleaming Cornucopia filled to the brim with weapons and supplies. The cannon rang out, and as Gloss lunged for the Cornucopia, he wondered if she was watching him at home.

He ran immediately for the weapons, grabbing a sword and lifting it experimentally. His eyes widened as he heard the sound of another approaching, and he turned with a blind stab. The small, choked cry reached his ears, and the light left the dark-haired girl's eyes. Shaking himself slightly, he lunged back into the fray, hacking left and right. And for the first time in seventeen years and one hundred and seven days, Gloss was really alive for the first time.

The tributes from the District of last year's victor almost never made it out of the bloodbath alive. Gloss left with a body count of six and enough supplies for two.

In the year that he competed, he didn't bother joining the Career pack. The tributes were pathetic, monstrously stupid with no tact whatsoever. It made them easy pickings of Gamemakers, and he didn't fancy being murdered by an accident. No, the real tribute to beat that year was a pretty little thing from 7 that had the sponsors falling over each other to send her gifts. She was attractive, quick-witted, murder with an axe, and too naïve to know her advantages. She was the one who Gloss approached in the steaming tropical jungle, and she was the one he ate with that night.

It took a few days, his plan. He and the girl—whose name was Joy, it seemed—evaded long-toothed cats as tall as Gloss and taking care to avoid the poisonous plants that populated the area, all the while he was dropping hints and compliments. When she finally approached him one night as they camped near the edge of the forest, his only question had been what had taken her so long. Her laugh had shattered the night air, and a warm mouth was pressed against his.

Gloss would be lying if he said he'd never kissed a girl before then. He had kissed Ruby, a girl who lived next door, and he had kissed his sister on the cheek. He would not be lying if he'd said he'd never kissed a girl like this before. She was inexperienced but eager, frenzied hands running up and down his sides and stomach. It was exhilarating, almost as good as fighting, and Gloss forgot himself for a moment. Hot fingers trailed down his chest and tugged at the hem of his shirt, and in his moment of dazed weakness, he whispered the name he had been thinking all along underneath those touches, the name he should have never spoken. The name was most definitely not _Joy_.

He realized his mistake before she did, freezing in horror, and her eyes had only just opened in confusion when he shoved the dagger's blade through her chest. He withdrew it only as the cannon sounded, wiping it off against his shirt and hoping against hope that the cameras hadn't picked up his mistake.

But all he thought of as the silver parachutes began to rain down on him were the blue eyes that should have met his, the fair hair his fingers should have tangled in, and the cruel red lips that should have pressed against his. He was alive, but his beautiful, sweet death haunted him with ever step.

It was only as he withdrew his sword from the District 8 boy's shattered remains of skull with shaking hands, only when he heard the final cannon fire and Templesmith announcing that District 1 had miraculously gained a victor for the second year in a row, that Gloss lifted his token and pressed it to his lips, the sharp edges of the tiny diamond almost cutting him in the process.

They would tell him on the way home that his heart had nearly stopped twice during the final fight with 8, when he had lost enough blood to kill someone twice his size. "It's remarkable, really!" chattered Aurelius, his Capitol manager whose skin sparkled gold as a new coin. "We thought we'd lost you there several times, but you kept pulling through for us."

Idly, Gloss wondered what it would look like if he slit Aurelius' throat like he had done to the sleeping boy he had found alone one night, how bright that scarlet would be against glimmering gold. Outwardly, he gave a knowing smile and nodded to indicate he was still pretending to listen. _Red against gold._ Yes, that would look excellent.

He had stepped off the train, only mildly surprised to not find his parents there to congratulate him. They would barely look at Cashmere after her Games, and no doubt they would have rathered that he'd have died than come home again. Instead, his sister waited for him there at the Justice Building, and he barely caught her as she flung herself into his arms. He could smell her shampoo, feel her pale hair tangle with his, and Gloss wondered if he could preserve this moment forever.

"Gloss." There it was, barely a murmur in his ear. He had already known then that she had heard him, that the cameras had picked up his impassioned whisper. He had seen the replay of it during his final interview with Flickerman, but it was no less nerve-wracking to hear her acknowledge it in her own way.

Then he had felt her bury her face in the hollow of his shoulder and exhale softly, a happy sigh, and the free life he had discovered in the arena was snuffed out like a flickering flame doused with water. She was Cashmere, after all, and he was hers.

It is the night before the Quarter Quell, but they do not rest like the other tributes. They had triumphed over more than this lot in their first Games, and if this is to really be their last night on Earth together, they will do what they do best and let the Capitol decadence consume them for the few short hours they have left.

But the Capital bitch is spidering her hand up his thigh, and he so longs to lash out and cut her, cut her until she's nothing more than a withered husk devoid of blood.

"So, 're you two, like, twins or somethin'?" she asks, ridiculous accent made all the more irritating by her drunken slur. Gloss tightens his grip on Cashmere's hand and sets his jaw in an unreadable expression, although his eyes glare bloody murder at the wall just beyond the woman.

His sister laughs, breezy and congenial as always. "Oh, no, Gloss is my baby brother by a few months." She leans over, just as he already knows she will, and presses her lips against his cheek in a peck of familial affection.

The drunken, vapid little slut giggles it off, too sodden with liquor to truly be embarrassed as she should be. "But, you're so, like, alike."

Her words, as inane and worthless as everything else about her, stop him cold. Yes, they are alike, physically and mentally. The same desire to kill, the same cold pride that nothing could break, the same fiery lust for the Games and the win and each other. Yes, in some ways, they are one and the same.

But then he remembers the hopeless devotion that had occupied the first sixteen years, ninety-four days, and eight hours of his life, all the love he had given her without an once of it being returned. He remembers the cold stares from the days after her first Games as he had begged her to tell him what was wrong, to tell him what he had done wrong. He remembers her farewell to him at the Justice Building, a curt nod as she barely looked at him. "Stay alive, baby brother," she had said, even though her tone said just the opposite. He remembers how badly it had all hurt, like he had swallowed shards of the diamond, and how she had stood indifferent to it all.

And he remembers, for the first time in his life, the miracle that was his run in the arena, an occurrence that was still the only record of it happening. The feeling of his sword sliding into a warm body, the pitiful, shocked cries of those he cornered, tiny voices begging for mercy, the innocent confusion in Joy's eyes; it all comes flooding back backed by the sound of steady cannonfire. He recalls the exhiliration of wedging the point of his blade between the beaten boy's eyes and pushing downwards. In fourteen days, twenty hours, and forty-seven minutes, he had accomplished a feat that had yet to be matched. For fourteen days, twenty hours, and forty-seven minutes, Gloss had lived for the first and last time during the entirety of his dead existence as his sister's servant, and he knew he would never really live like that again. And if fourteen days, twenty hours, and forty-seven minutes is all he gets, then he's glad that it was enough.

Because he knows that he will not leave these Games alive, but they cannot take away anything he hasn't already lost. They can kill him, but his beautiful death has been with him all along.

"No," he says quietly, stirring his drink. Cashmere looks up, slightly surprised that he is actually replying, and he smiles thinly at her. "No, I don't think we're very alike at all."


End file.
